U.S. Navy Capt. Michael Merino is fighting to get his position back on the Orange Planning Commission. COURTESY MICHAEL MERINO

At what point does a returning veteran no longer get his job back? When is a political appointment really even a “job” that a vet should have a right to reclaim?

Those questions have been on my mind since Nov. 12, when the Orange City Council decided not to give architect and Navy reserve Capt. Michael Merino his old seat back on the Planning Commission.

Merino has been deployed overseas five times during his 25-year career, most recently in 2011-12, when he went to Guantanamo Bay to be the chief engineering officer for our facilities there. When he left, he sent a letter to Councilman Denis Bilodeau, the person responsible for his appointment, in which he said, “I reserve the right, in accordance with the federal protections and provisions accorded military personnel, to reassume my position on the commission…”

Bilodeau says that while the official record may reflect the council voted to accept his resignation, the “spirit of it was that he would get his position back. Everybody understood what the deal was.”

Merino returned in October of 2012. He says he told Bilodeau he wanted his position back, but because of internal politics, Bilodeau saw it wouldn’t be that easy and tried to work out a deal behind the scenes. It wasn’t until two weeks ago the reluctance to reappoint him became public. Bilodeau wanted him back; the rest of the council didn’t.

Under the city rules, the mayor nominates commissioners for the council to vote on. Traditionally, each council member gets to give the mayor one name, but the mayor can reject it. On Nov. 12, Mayor Tita Smith said she didn’t want Merino reappointed. Bilodeau’s motion to have the matter discussed further died for lack of a second from the other councilmen: Mike Alvarez, Mark Murphy and Fred Whitaker.

That night, Smith gave four reasons for not reappointing Merino: 1) the council seated when it got Merino’s January 2012 letter has two new members; 2) Merino’s original term has expired; 3) the law that requires vets to get their jobs back does not apply to political appointments; and 4) “Five years for a planning commissioner is a long life” and it is time for “someone new.”

Bilodeau got Smith to acknowledge that she had served 13 years on the Planning Commission, said he was “disgusted,” and then went out and alerted the media. Some conservative blogs and talk radio have picked up the story, veterans’ groups are incensed, and a lively crowd is expected Tuesday when the matter is back on the agenda.

So what’s really going on? Why was Merino rejected? Smith’s clearly doesn’t believe that five years is a cap and reasons 1, 2 and 3 only address why she didn’t feel she had to reappoint him. The other council members were largely silent. I called them Thursday.

Murphy says he respects the mayor’s prerogative to only bring forward nominees of her choosing. A former three-term mayor himself, he said he didn’t always select the first choice of a council member.

Alvarez – who ironically owns the Army Navy store on Glassell, next to which flies a city-placed banner honoring Merino’s service – told me that “it’s not so much (Merino) so much as I don’t like how Denis is trying to force him back on” by going around the mayor.

Whitaker agrees on the procedural issue, but goes further.

“He’s not a very good planning commissioner,” he says of Merino, with whom he served there. Whitaker says Merino tends to be “overly bombastic with the way he deals with people who come to the dais. … They are trying to make political hay out of this issue and the rest of us will have to take our lumps. I’m a conservative and I believe a conservative will be appointed at some point. The way this is being presented is just demagoguery.”

Merino says there were few disagreements or controversies on the commission but it wouldn’t be desirable to have a commission in which everybody was in lockstep anyway. Bilodeau thinks that Merino, who twice ran for City Council, might be seen as a threat if he’s on the Planning Commission, which has been a traditional steppingstone. But Merino says he has no such interests any longer.

There is a compromise. Bilodeau will leave the council in 12 months. Let Merino take the commission seat until then.

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